The present invention relates to dispatching or controlling of taxis, ambulances, or other vehicles.
A number of systems have been devised for dispatching of vehicles or other services upon demand. The complexity of dispatching systems ranges from fully manual systems to systems employing elaborate computer databases and tracking systems.
To dispatch vehicles accurately and in a timely fashion, several things must be done concurrently. Vehicles must be tracked so that their location is known so that they may be efficiently selected for future jobs. The position and status of dispatched vehicles must be monitored to determine if they are on time or delayed. Customer requests must be received and posted for dispatching, and then dispatched. Delayed arrivals should be identified and reported to the customer as soon as possible.
A fully manual dispatching system (such as is employed by smaller taxi companies), requires a single human being to perform all of the tasks identified above. More modern dispatching systems provide automation of some of the described tasks.
For example, various systems have been established to manage the reception and posting of customer requests. For example, the xe2x80x9cLife-TRAKxe2x80x9d system, available from the assignee of the present application, provides a database server storing a database of customer request records. New records are generated by call takers who receive incoming telephone calls from customers. Also, records may be generated at remote sites, for example by contract customers, and transmitted into the central database by telephone connections. The customer requests are then reported to dispatchers who determine when the requests are in need of service, and dispatch a vehicle as needed.
There are also commercially available systems for assisting the dispatching tasks described above. For example, there are commercially available Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) systems which automatically track (typically via satellite navigation) the locations of managed vehicles, so that this information can be reported to a dispatcher in textual or graphic form to assist the dispatcher determining the locations of vehicles. Typically, the dispatcher uses this information to select a vehicle for a particular job, and then forwards instructions to the driver to assign them the job. Often, the AVL includes data fields where the dispatcher may store an indication of the status of a vehicle (e.g., dispatched or available) and the vehicle""s capabilities (e.g., wheelchair-compatible, etc.) so that this information can be used by the dispatcher in selecting a vehicle for a job and monitoring activity of the vehicles.
Advanced AVL systems further facilitate dispatching, by automatically identifying, upon request, the nearest vehicles to a given address or latitude/longitude position, to assist the dispatcher in selecting a vehicle for dispatch. Furthermore, AVL systems may also include a street map database and search algorithm through which the AVL can identify a street route from one address to another upon request from the dispatcher.
In some cases, the dispatcher communicates with the vehicles via radio communication or cellular telephone connections. In other cases, the AVL system itself includes support for textual communication between dispatchers and the vehicles through mobile data terminals (MDT""s) mounted in the vehicle, which typically make use of underlying cellular communication networks.
Despite the high degree of automation that has been applied to vehicle dispatching, as described above, one common thread between fully manual dispatching and the most automated dispatching systems is their central reliance on human beings to make dispatching decisions and perform monitoring of vehicles once dispatched. Unfortunately, it has been found that a primary source of errors, in even the most automated dispatching systems, is human error. For example, a dispatcher may misread customer job request and fail to dispatch it on time. Or the dispatcher may forward a dispatch to a vehicle through a MDT but fail to follow up and ensure that the MDT message has been acknowledged by the vehicle driver and that the vehicle is en route, causing the vehicle to arrive late, or not at all. Or, in the case of taxi or ambulance/ambulette dispatching, the dispatcher may through inadvertence assign a taxi which is not wheelchair-equipped to a job which requires a wheelchair-equipped vehicle, or assign an ambulette (wheelchair ambulance) to a job which requires a stretcher ambulance, resulting in wasted time and/or delay for the customer. Or special instructions relating to the customer, route, or other items may fail to be forwarded to the vehicle.
It is the object of the present invention to overcome these shortcomings in known vehicle dispatching systems by providing a fully automated dispatching system which, at least under normal operating conditions, eliminates the human dispatcher from dispatching operations. The elimination of human errors of the kind described in the previous paragraph greatly improves the consistency of service provided to customers and improves the likelihood of repeat requests.
In one specific aspect, the invention features a system for controlling vehicles to provide transportation services without need for human intervention, including a database of records each documenting needed transportation services. This database is reviewed by processing circuitry to locate records indicating a need for immediate transportation service, and then instruct vehicles to provide the vehicle service. In addition, the processing circuitry monitors the records after dispatching, along with vehicle activity information, to identify transportation services which are not being adequately provided. The processing circuitry is in continuous automatic communication with the vehicles, forwarding instructions to vehicles and obtaining vehicle activity information relating to each vehicle.
The processing circuitry may be a microcomputer running a multitasking operating system, a network of computers, or any other arrangement of computing hardware, including an arrangement of computers spread geographically in a wide-area network. There may be multiple processes to dispatch and monitor vehicles, running simultaneously on networked computers or in a multitasking operating system.
The vehicle communications may use ground-based radio communication, satellite-based radio communication, or both. In particular, satellite-based vehicle tracking circuitry may be used to track the locations of the vehicles, and the vehicle locations forwarded via satellite or radio to the processing circuitry for using in vehicle monitoring.
The vehicle monitoring may evaluate the vehicle""s movements and position to determine if it has arrived at or is en route to an appointed location. Alternatively, or in addition, the vehicle operator may manually communicate the arrival of the vehicle at the appointed location.
Requests for vehicle service may be entered by call takers at the location of the database server, or may be entered remotely via telephone, either at a data terminal at a customer site or via touch-tone telephone or at an ATM-like facility using a customer identification card.
When the automated dispatching and controlling system finds a task which is not being adequately serviced, and cannot rectify the situation, the system creates an exception records to refer this situation to a human dispatcher who then may take extraordinary action with respect to the situation.
The automated dispatching and controlling system not only collects vehicle appointment and activity information, but also collects billing information associated with requested transportation services, for example, in an ambulance environment, the patient name, diagnosis, reason for transit, insurance information, etc. When a task is completed, this information is used to automatically, and without further human involvement, generate paper or electronic invoicing for the services rendered.
The system may also be used to monitor use of the vehicles, e.g., whether the vehicle is moving, the velocity of the vehicle, whether the vehicle is braking, fuel usage of the vehicle, whether emergency signals of the vehicle are operating, and whether the engine is idling. This information can be used to determine, in a more detailed manner, the status of the vehicle, e.g., whether it is stalled in traffic, or whether the vehicle is being used inappropriately. In either case, an exception record can be generated to refer the situation to a human dispatcher.
The collection of information on current vehicle status and future appointments can be combined to provide continual, automated system status management, to determine and predict future needs for transportation services and compare the future needs to expected availability of transportation services. If this process identifies future times at which available transportation services will not meet predicted needs, this situation can be referred to a human dispatcher ahead of time so that corrective action can be taken. Alternatively, or in addition, the system may automatically instruct a vehicle to pre-position to a location where the vehicle will be better able to meet predicted future needs for transportation services, to minimize future delays.
An important feature of the automated dispatching system is that a dispatching process instruction to a vehicle identifies a route to be followed by the vehicle. This feature will be increasingly important in the future when governmental or insurance entities may begin to demand particular routing, or at least identify maximum mileages that will be reimbursed. By ensuring vehicles follow pre-defined routing, these requirements can be more easily met.
Indeed, it is expected that the ability to automatically generate routes, and to automatically provide them to vehicles, in accordance with the present invention, will heighten awareness of mileage charges and result in a demand for systems to review mileage charges (no matter how generated) and compare the mileage charges to the mileage for an optimal routing. Such a system might be used by an insurance or governmental agency to locate excessive mileage charges, or used by a transit company to pre-screen invoices before they are rejected by an insurance or governmental agency. Accordingly, the present invention encompasses systems which make use of existing AVL technology to compute routing and mileage based on invoiced pickup and destination sites, and then compare the mileage of the computed route to the mileage charged in the invoice.
The above and other objects and advantages of the present invention shall be made apparent from the accompanying drawings and the description thereof.